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American Neoconservatism moves beyond recent debates over the intricacies of the Bush administration's foreign policy to offer a deeper look at the philosophical premises of this 'new' conservatism in light of the historical events and changing social compacts that have created a demand for itover the past decades.It surveys neoconservative discourses on democracy, the liberal state, capitalism, national security, international law and global liberal governance, and draws attention to the systematic links between the domestic and international dimensions of neoconservative political sociology.Taking issue with neoconservatism's self-image, Drolet argues and demonstrates that American neoconservatism is not the centrist 'liberal' conservatism that it pretends to be--and that many analysts have diagnosed in recent years. To the extent that neoconservatism is committed to theEnlightenment discourse of liberalism, these commitments are firmly subordinated to an authoritarian form of cultural and philosophical conservatism, which is in fact ferociously predatory on liberal values and practices. Neoconservatism is not a conservative variant of liberalism but a deeplyatavistic reaction to liberal modernity. It owes a lot more to the authoritarian intellectual milieu of interwar Europe than to the liberal tradition that its protagonists allegedly want to reform and protect against its enemies.

About The Author

Dr Jean-Francois Drolet is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary University, London. He studied at Oxford University, the LSE and Lund University and his articles have appeared in Millennium, the Review of International Studies, International Politics and the Journal of
Political Ideologies.